not quite the Socratic dialogue

Final Project Reflection

The first challenge of this project was figuring out exactly what to do. Somehow, and we had no idea how, we had to convey very complex linguistic theories to our classmates who we assumed had little to no experience with that kind of theory. Initially we had the idea of doing a pastiche of an old informational slideshow reel; we thought it would be a nice remediation of an old style, as well as exemplary of a subset of an educational speech genre. We know that the dings mean 'turn to the next page' because we are informed by our society about that genre. But that idea didn't really pan out; we couldn't think of a good enough way to incorporate both theories and have it be effective. Over break I was ranting about theory to a coworker, who reminded me of the film "Waking Life," which is a life-action philosophical film turned into a cartoon style, complete with extra illustration of the ideas being stated. I sent a clip of the movie to Nicole, and we decided on doing a podcast working in that kind of mode. We figured something more conversational, yet illustrated with sound, would be more interesting and easier to follow than a straightforward presentation, since theory is so dense and can get preachy and boring to those not already interested. We went this route instead of a practical application of the theory because with our theory, the ideas are so inherent to our language that we thought that it would be difficult to explain and exemplify at the same time.
So over break I worked on the bare skeleton of what we would say (since I was the one with experience studying literary theory), and brought it to class Tuesday. From there we brainstormed a bit more on what precisely we wanted to cover; I wrote my rambling bits of theoretical explanation and Nicole wrote her critical comments and modern applications of the theory. That night we found an empty engineering classroom, practiced a few times, and edited the text, which ended up being much more intensive than we had anticipated. Then we set upon the task of putting in the complimentary sounds to illustrate our points a bit more, cutting them in just so in order to fit the time limit. We decided on the radio sounds at the beginning and end to give the illusion that the listener tunes in and out and that this is just part of a longer discussion, to suggest that there is so much more you could say on this topic.
We decided to challenge ourselves to keep our podcast within the time limit, and it was that more than anything that led to the majority of the edits. It forced us to really scrutinize the theory and make decisions regarding what was truly essential to the works. It also made our criticism much more to the point and concise. Overall, our project achieved our goal of presenting a semi-informal discussion and explanation of genre theory. It combines a presentation of the theory with our own interpretations and critiques thereof.

new jumping off point for our project?

I mean obviously we can't vector a film like that but even an audio version would be awesome and probably the best way to get theory and critique across.
Maybe?

Prepare Yourselves for Theory

This is what it turns you into.

EXHIBIT A: SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK'S WEDDING

Except probably without the model wife.

response to Qs

1. Explain a piece of "modern art" that you have recently come across and what emotional response you had to it. [via Emma]

My neighbor has a public art piece up, mimicking the signs that are in front of UIUC buildings on campus. It was originally intended to be a straightforward pastiche, complete with false department name. However, he decided to go for a more interactive piece with the chalkboard to make the sign even more subversive.
Since I expected the installation, I was not as confused as most people I see when they come across the sign. However, I think it's a very interesting commentary. It does relate to remediation because it is a reworking of a known medium into something more collaborative, which is pretty cool, honestly. Inviting people to write on a sign with all the things that university signs imply (ie, the Man and that it is an Institution of Serious Learning) has had some pretty interesting results. I've seen everything from the inane to quotes to personal confessions.

Bolter Questions

1) Why do you think media are become increasingly self-referential?

2) What is the result of video's increasing dominance over more traditionally linguistic forms?

3) How is remediation 'healing' our interaction with media?

Representing Others Video

Representing Others Analysis

The video project proved much more challenging than I had anticipated. First of all, it was a group project, and not just because I was working with a partner in the class. Our interviewee, in a sense, became like a third group members whose input we also had to work with. From the get go, the only way in which we could form an idea for the project going in was to think up interview questions - the final product, it seemed, was much reliant on what came out of our interviewee's mouth. We were very aware that we would only be able to work with what we were given, and even ended up debating over the way questions were worded in order to elicit the right sort of answer.
Secondly, due to scheduling conflicts, Nicole took on the filming duties while I became editor. I ended up having to cut down over a half hour's worth of footage into a 6 minutes piece. (Actually, I had to down to about 4.5 minutes before I decided to add in the bit about the Sun Singer to give an example of the art Allerton collected.) In order to do this, I had to mince Linda Bailey's words quite a bit. I felt almost like I was manipulating the narrative she had given us. Revising someone else's words in this medium is not quite the same as in written form; she doesn't get another go at it once I make my 'corrections'. As the articles we read suggested, the editor also becomes a sort of author, albeit with limitations. Even so, it surprised me the extent to which I was able to construct the narrative. For times sake, I condensed much of what she said, which is somewhat noticeable due to the remaining jump cuts I couldn't find appropriate footage to cover, and somewhat in some of the voiceover segments. Even so, it almost scares me to think of what someone with a better program and more technological prowess could do. The ability to manipulate someone else's image and likeness through the media available to us today is quite impressive; it also further complicates the concept of authorship and who can claim to have written what in new media. To what extent did I author this piece? Certainly, I will be receiving a grade for 'my work' - but none of the content was actually produced by me, since I neither provided information nor filmed it. I was solely the manipulator, but someone in this age this affords me some level of authorship over the final product.
In relation to the technology used, well, that was even more of a headache. I have worked with Final Cut Pro before, but ages ago on a half-dead iMac that crashed every four minutes or so. So really this was like starting from scratch. The technology was also much different. It's actually interesting how Apple, in this program, moves away from a more visual interface. Although it's the basic software, I actually found this to be much more complicated. It took me quite a while to figure out how exactly to layer footage and audio to create intra-piece voiceovers. So although it is easier to do fancy things like text overlays, the basics of film editing are somewhat complicated in the digital format.


(I also had no small amount of trouble trying to get the footage off of my computer. I had to import it twice after I realized you apparently can't move raw footage from one computer to the next. Currently I'm working on exporting the footage to YouTube and still getting errors. I'm going to try again in the morning to get the footage up. Maybe with a vaguely more alert mind it will be easier? Otherwise, the laptop is coming to class with me.)

still my favorite documentary piece

This might be one of the few things I miss about TV/cable.


And also just because it's ridiculously cute, albeit tardy:

mental_floss' Halloween Costumes to Inflict Upon the Innocent
This really has nothing to do with class, I just want to share that lobster picture.

3. The book The High Cost of Death, mentioned in the article, was coauthored but only one name appeared on the book cover to increase sales. What are your thoughts on this? [via Jen]

I think this suggests something about the way in which we view collaborative works, especially writing. For academic works, it seems ok (the quiz the book cites shows this). But even in music, we prefer one band name over a list of people, and in movies one main name to associate with it. For some reason or another, it is simply more marketable to have one name. Perhaps we have the idea that two people means it is not as 'good' of a work - they each had to put in less effort - or that there will be something disjointed about it.
As the chapter suggests, the concept of authorship is steadily changing, though. With the new media that are arising within the realm of published works, that often rely much more on collaboration, perhaps multiple citations on pop culture works will become more commonplace. Maybe we will go against Foucault's individualism.

Top Ten Things Noticed Over the Past Week

The ones that stood out the most...

1) there is a cupola-looking thing on top of the IUB
2) a beer bottle by the dumpster enclosure of the FLB that is still there... I first noticed it like 4 months ago
3) there is the engraved image of a monk on the necks of our espresso heads at work
4) I never signed my i-Card. huh.
5) the cherries on Cherry Coke Zero bottles are designed to resembled 0s
6) wait, Moonstruck closed?
7) there is this crazy room on the 3rd floor of the English building in which the walls do not reach up to the ceiling
8) Altgeld played Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
9) the Business & Economics library study room has old fashioned outlets about 6ft up the wall
10) there are numbers on the doors at the entrance to the undergrad - 252

Ede & Lunsford Questions

1) This piece cites a 1985 article that talks about the future of 'groupware' - ie, networked computers. But ARPANET had existed long before this... what do you make of the discrepancy between the collaborative technology existing and actually being readily available, or even seeming feasible, for common usage, and what this implies for authorship?
2) Do you think media have become democratized, as the snippets suggest, or do you agree with Foucault?
3) We are doing one of these collaborative group projects using new media. Do you have any of the same concerns, or do you think we have grown more used to it over the years? What does this imply about using newer media?

Hampe Response

1. Stephen King once wrote: "To write is human, to edit is divine." How might this belief hold true for documentary-making? How might it apply differently for documentary films rather than novels? [via Eric A.]

As Hampe says. the editor of a documentary can only work with what is there, and what can be represented visually. While a novelist can edit AND rewrite, it is nigh impossible for a documentary filmmaker to refilm a scene. Not to say that this kind of film editing is more difficult, but it definitely presents its own set of challenges and constraints.
I would also argue that, when it comes to the documentary, editing is divine in a further sense than King's play on an old saying. Documentary editing is what builds the storyline. It is the creation of art out of raw material. It is, is this sense, divine - as in the filmmaker becomes the creator. And as opposed to the novel, what is left out still exists. Its exclusion is as important as the next piece's inclusion. The divine quality of the filmmaker is his/her power over the raw footage.

Questions for 21 October

1) The idea of 'showing' versus 'telling' goes across media. What makes it especially relevant and important to film? What special challenges (or impossibilities) arise?
2) Hempe notes that people's initial response to 'what did you see?' is to elaborate on the film rather than simply state its contents. What do you think this says about our reaction to this particular medium?
3) Why might a filmmaker bring contradictory images into play?

The Cultural Assimilation of my Youth, or, How I Became Italian

Initial Version

"Ah, Chicago! Bang-bang!"
That was the reaction I received upon telling some university students in Padova, Italy where I came from.

"No, that's a stereotype-" I was about to say, but then I reconsidered. After all, hadn't my neighbor...er... "committed suicide" not 6 months earlier? We never quite figured out how exactly he killed himself while tied to a chair in his garage, but there you go. And hadn't Joey the Clown just been caught, hiding approximately a block and a half from the police station?
So I began to consider what a truly strange place my hometown is, and how I grew to think it was normal. In short, how this Western European mutt by blood became Italian by, as my friend's dad used to jokingly put it, osmosis.

My family first figured out how strange Elmwood Park was soon after moving there in 1992. I think our first clue was being fully ignored at a neighbor's party, solely based upon the fact that someone had found out we weren't Italian. We had also come from Oak Park - basically, the worst kind of outsiders. After a while, we gained some social standing but were always looked upon warily, especially by those who were involved in the Catholic church and school we attended. We slowly figured out ways to be more acceptable - learning the foods, knowing the slang. Knowing what NOT to talk about was just as important. No one ever discussed how so many who claimed to work in construction could afford such big houses. Eventually, my family learned to pretend, go through the motions, associate with the right people after mass on Sunday, and be generally accepted.

But as for me, throughout grade school I remained somewhat on the outskirts in my class of 25. Some of that can be attributed to me being a nerd, but it was mostly due to me struggling to figure out how to survive in this clearly singular environment. When we had a "native american basket wearing project" in 3rd grade, I mentioned I was part Algonquin and was made to sit on the floor, Indian style, and weave my basket. In 5th grade half of the class stopped talking to me because they found out I was German. So I learned to not talk about my nationalities.
I also figured out how to fake priorities. Appearance is perhaps the most important thing in Elmwood Park - so I pretended to like those terrible velour tracksuits and joined cheerleading for a year. I changed my mode of speech in certain situations, and some girls even started calling me 'Lo' to fit in better among the Francescas, Sabellas, and Gabriellas. I loathed that name, but went along with it.

By the age of 15 I was fully assimilated. Working at my church, I didn't flinch when the old Italian men who served as ushers called me "bella" in a terrible accent and kissed my hand. It was normal when the mother of one of my brother's friends only stopped acting cooly towards my mom when she found out I was her daughter. Flattery and social graces were second nature.
It's around then I learned how far the sphere of Elmwood Park extends. While at a high school friend's house on the southside of Chicago, I was able to talk two young men who preferred the moniker "Italian Stallions" out of beating up a mutual friend by citing my hometown - they lived a few miles away, in a town with close ties to ours. Later in the night, another friend would comment, "Man. I knew you could pull rank on someone, yeah. I didn't know you could pull residency."

Going away to college at the age of 18 was somewhat of a godsend for me in terms of being exposed to something other than this little world; among other things, I found out that 'wife-beaters' are those shirts I had always called 'dego tees'. But, like the family that calls it home, you can never quite escape Elmwood Park. I still sound more like Roseanne Rosannadanna when I get angry than I'd like to admit. My cooking and hostess mannerisms are invariably those of an Italian grandmother. I listen to way too much Sinatra and Dean Martin than someone my age rightly should. A coworker of mine in Urbana, who I hadn't known beforehand, grew up two blocks away from me.
And on that trip to Italy, I found out one of the people one the trip with me was dating my grade school best friend's cousin, who still lives in town. It's inescapable.
But even with all the oddities and just plain scary things about my town, I don't think it's necessarily bad. It's given me an adopted culture, not to mention some great stories. By the way, my dad still swears that that mobster who was caught a few blocks away - Joey the Clown Lombardo - is "good people". He's wanted for 17 murders, yes, but he's the uncle of a family friend!
That's what gave me pause when trying to refute that stereotype the Italian students mentioned. It's a strange town, but it's my town, and I feel this bizarre sense of pride about it. So on the other side of the world, sitting in a piazza on the outskirts of Venice, I had to consider my roots and say, "No... well, yes, ok, that is pretty true."
My answer was met with laughter and a kiss on the cheek. I didn't flinch.

This assignment was one of the most difficult so far. The writing process was much more intensive, and the audio aspect definitely presented its own challenges. Initially I had no idea what to do, but eventually settled on talking about my hometown, which, as I elaborate upon, is pretty much a world unto itself. Then I had to decide how to structure a narrative around it, and decided upon telling somewhat of a story about how my town required me to assimilate into the Italian culture over the years. It ended up being pretty cursory due to the time limit, but in the narrative methods I used I tried to retain some sort of structure.
I had some difficultly keeping it to five minutes and still making it conversational. In my practice runs it came in somewhere around 4 minutes - definitely time to spare - but I ended up having to chop some stuff out in editing in order to get it under and still keep the tone. (It shows up as 5:03 on the mp3 for some reason, although it's under 5 minutes in garage band. Ah well.) I had to be very aware of my voice as well as of my surroundings... not to fidget and make any extraneous noise, to avoid filler words and sounds. The spoken word in this medium seems to be a practice of economy and self-restraint. You have to say a lot in a short amount of time, but you certainly don't want to babble. It also brings up issues of spoken language versus written language, and how we tend to write more formally than we speak.
I certainly had to consider the language I was using. I kind of balked at using the word 'dego,' because I have met so many people who find it offensive rather than as a term for a certain kind of Italian as I learned it, but I hope people are able to take it in context. I definitely changed some things in my reading of my piece to make it sound more spontaneous, but since I tried to write for the spoken word, I found myself playing around more with the cadence of my voice than anything else.
I knew from the beginning that I would probably use Sinatra as my background music, but I wasn't quite sure where to put it. I had a part in there originally talking about how you can tell a party in my town because you can hear the Sinatra from 3 blocks away, but ended up cutting that and was left without a place to put the music. So I admittedly kind of copped out and just put it as a fade out at the end. However, I did splice together the beginning and end of the song, as well as putting in a little riff where I actually talk about Sinatra. I wish I would have found a better way to segue into the beginning, but music didn't quite seem to fit there. The entire thing didn't turn out quite as I had hoped, but I've found out throughout this class that that happens alot when working with media.

14 October Answer

3) Does equipment make a difference? (if the picture is clearer or easier to hear, are you more likely to gravitate toward a 'professionally' made one compared to a lesser quality one?) [via Nicole]

I really think it depends on context; if it's a nature documentary, yes. However, grainy wartime footage or something of the like can lend it a sense of being 'in the moment' and less likely to be staged. For example, in the class directly before this one we just watched a PETA film called 'Meet Your Meat'. Although probably more a video persuasive essay than a documentary, it used hidden camera footage to show the tactics used on animals in factory farms. In this case, the unsteady filming and somewhat poor quality was excusable and actually made it seem more believable.
But in terms of watching a documentary for leisure - yes, I'm more likely to lean towards Meerkat Manor than something less professionally filmed and edited.

Hampe Reading Questions

1) What would you make of "mockumentaries" (such as The Office)? What features of the genre would make a writer/filmmaker who is actually filming a fiction choose the deceit of a documentary?

2) Have you actually seen any documentaries outside of class time? What drew you to them?

3) What aspects of remediation come into play in terms of the documentary?

audio manipulation c. 1968

Just when I thought I couldn't come up with any examples of audio layering they put on the White Album at Cafe Kopi.

Shipka answer

What did Val do instead of making a physical prototype of the museum? [via Andrew]


She instead created a prototype of the audio for the museum, since her museum was largely composed of a tour through audio-based components that explored her idea of American greed and the stereotypes surrounding that. Therefore instead of a physical mockup she was able to make a CD that created for the listener the illusion of a physical space by indicator words in her tour.

Shipka questions

1) What makes something "soundly engineered" rather than just, well, noise?

2) What expectations of sound are now arising in multimodal environments and works?

3) How do you feel about Shipka's assignment?

2) The inherent ambiguity of audio leaves much room for interpretation. Is this an impediment to the conveyance of ideas? [via Michael]

I feel like it is only an impediment to the extent that any limitations of a medium are an impediment to its ability to convey ideas. It is just as reliant on our experiences in terms of how that colors our interpretation; we all have varying associations with certain sounds as much as we have different associations with certain images. McKee even talks about sound poems, and I doubt that the interpretation of these is any more open than that of a traditional poem.

Photoshop Project: Option 1

I initially attempted to avoid the political (read: anti-Bush) route because that seemed to be the go-to for this project, but I ended up with that kind of commentary anyways. Perhaps our tendency to go towards political commentary with these types of assignments shows what kind of media and images we are inundated with on a regular basis. If these are our default images to manipulate, it would make sense that this is because these are the images we identify as most important or influential within our own lives.
For my photo manipulation, I eventually settled on the Washington Monument reflecting back an image of an oil drill in the pool on the National Mall. I chose this image because of its central and iconic status, and I mean central quite literally - everything in DC is centered around this structure, and the city sprawls out from the National Mall. By placing an oil drill as the reflection of such a central edifice, I hoped to suggest that oil is as central to our government policies right now as the monument is to the capital. I tried to reflect (no pun intended) the points made by Berger about the way in which we view images as both self-evident and creations. They are immediately present, and in that virtue lies photo manipulations' ability to be an effective mode of social commentary.
I am admittedly not the greatest photoshopper in the world (as shown by the fact that I couldn't get the gradient on the reflected skies to match no matter how hard I tried), but I hope that the interaction of the two images within one composite piece speaks louder than my photoshop skills. I think the success of a composite image isn't even necessarily reliant on 'good photoshopping,' so much as its ability to get the point across. The appropriateness of the way in which the two or more images are combined, I think, are more important than the skill with which they are combined. A monkey face crudely stuck on George W Bush's body can be more effective than some obscure but adroit photo manipulation. Furthermore, the effectiveness of such an image requires the image to be contextually situated; oftentimes, this involves taking a well known image and manipulating it in an unexpected way in order to make the viewer look twice. (E.g. All the takes on Da Vinci's 'The Last Supper'.) As Berger suggests, with new media, images become iconic not only by their own existence but through their interaction with other images and the different incarnations thereof. However, what /can/ be said for a good photo manipulation is the discussion it may bring about regarding the veracity of the image. A poor version of the Sarah Palin manipulation we saw in class may have generated a few laughs, but the fact that people may have even thought it was real brings up issues about how we view Palin herself.
My photoshop project certainly isn't going to make anyone thing that the Washington Monument is truly reflecting an offshore drill site, but perhaps it will bring to mind exactly what is the structure at the center of the Bush administration's consideration, and the implications of that.

manipulated media

The things we've been talking about in class brought to mind some of the artwork my friend's brother has done.
It's social commentary without words, and I must say is pretty awesome.


The first is "The Consultation," which he says can be perceived either as a faceoff or a collaboration. (This actually hung in a gallery that George W. Bush toured.)






He also did a series called "Coke Was There". They pretty much speak for themselves.

23 september answer

3). Is Drucker stating that since Instructive language is to protect us and prevent us from making a mistake that maybe someone created before, but is holding us back from exploring or making our own decisions? [Kai]

I think perhaps she suggests that we need to at times take a step back from the language and images that instruct our everyday lives and look at them more critically. However, our acceptance of these image/word combinations and their symbolic meanings is essential to the cohesiveness of our current society. This is why images such as this one are so effective; they draw us out of the given meaning we assume of the image. Drucker perhaps wants us to question the medium if not the meaning.
I also think this might be the reason it's so common to steal instructional signs. In countless dorm rooms, apartments, and garages I have seen NO _________ signs (or, among my obviously classier acquaintances, SPEED HUMP). The transgression is not only disobeying the signs, but taking the sign themselves- and therefore eliminating the message and its context. Eliminating the context begins to wear away at the legitimacy of the meaning, making it funny instead of law; it eliminates that location indexing that Drucker references.

reading questions

1) What has been your reaction to the readings' varying takes on the way in which language and imagery interact? Believable? Complete BS? Mixture of the two?

2) According to the readings, why do we overlook things that are everpresent, and why is this significant to the way in which we conceive our own experience of the world?

3) What is there to say of the trivialization of stamps? They, apparently, used to be symbols of what the nation was trying to say - now, at least in our country, they seem to be considered tributes (even Jimmy Stewart had one). Is this a trivialization, or simply an evolution of the stamp as medium?

Sept. 16th answer

3. Why are the visual differences between Charlie Brown and Batman important?
via Andrew

Both are iconic figures that to us are as representative as much of the concepts they evoke as much as the characters themselves. Charlie Brown is the downtrodden everyman, while Batman is the modern Byronic hero (we're talking comics, here, not the TV show Jon linked). Both are comedic at times but, as "The Vocabulary of Comics" notes, it is their merging of art and text that allows them to also combine the comedic with an exploration of deeper human issues, and allows us to see ourselves in both characters.
Each comic-book artist's style somewhat reflects this. 'Peanuts' tends to be more simplistic and almost feels slower in style, while 'Batman' has flair for the dramatic. So while Charlie Brown can be all of us in an everyday sense, Batman is evocative of deeper human issues through its dramatic and in-your-face imagery.

Reading Questions: Sept. 15th

1) "The Vocabulary of Comics" addresses the way in which comics merge visual media and become more accessible for that ability. It seems to assume that both their artistic and verbal simplicity are what makes the comic an appealing medium. What then, are we to do with graphic novels? Can they be considered comics with their wordiness and their tendency towards detailed art?

2) From the details garnered from the readings, what makes pictographic media more appealing to the viewer (ie over just plain text)? What does this say about the way we engage with a medium/piece of information?

3) Berger discusses the immediate nature and permanency of the image; what "ways of seeing" show how this is helpful in convincing the viewer of any variety of ideas? For what reasons has this medium become so ingrained within our society?

'late post' OR 'my computer hates Bar Guiliani's wireless'

My stencil ended up pretty far from the social commentary we've been seeing in class. In fact, it's mostly a very nerdy joke. The project is also wordless, to make it so it wasn't 'too easy'. Looking back, incorporating text may have actually been a good idea - the final result turned out much less recognizable than I had first thought. It will probably be lost on most people, and I'm pretty sure that would be considered a failure in the street art world.


I started out with this picture, with the idea of doing something to the tip jar at work in the vein of a sign that was there a few years ago: "Support Counter Intelligence". However, I am not that clever and quickly abandoned that. Sticking with the same picture, I decided to make a contextual joke - Jack Kerouac's face! On the road! Haha, get it?! Yeah, my roommates gave me the same blank stare. Ah well, va bene.

In some way I guess I wanted to not only make a joke but maybe get people to wonder about this person on the pavement - another reason that excluding text was probably a poor choice after all. The social movement he inspired seems to have died out in all but a few circles; it was never too widespread, but so much great art came out of it, so much discussion of alternate viewpoints (Ginsberg and his young men made quite a splash, I must say). The liberalization of published media comes out of the efforts of this man and his friends, so why are they so rarely recognized outside of literary circles?
Granted, beat has always been an undercurrent rather than part of the society - indeed, it is a rejection of the mainstream - but maybe we should take their advice and seek out and question the things we take for granted in everyday structures and lifestyles. Finding the symbolic in the everyday was a large part of their philosophy, and Kerouac's image on the blacktop becomes self-referencing in that cheeky post-modern way and hopefully leads to a consideration of the ideas behind that road. Why do we obey the signs that tell us that only buses are allowed on that section of road? What does that imply? What authority do these signs have over other types?
I also saw several people actually stepping out into the middle of the road on the terminal after I was finished, and that made me consider why we are so intrigued by images and text being present in an unusual space. That is, of course, part of graffiti in the first place. A graffito draws attention to itself by virtue of being an invasive signifier. Whereas we walk past road signs we've seen a billion times assuming we know their message, street art attempts to jolt us out of that passive observation. Very beat in nature, no?

After a series of what would be euphemistically called 'technical difficulties' but what most people would call 'rain and sidewalk chalk don't mix,' I was finally able to both post my stencil and acquire halfway decent pictures of it. I did several around the quad area, including near the Wright St. bus terminal, which made me a little nervous if I'm honest. I'm not quite prepared to die for the sake of a visual pun. It did give me more appreciation for what street artists do, though; I never realized how time consuming it is, or how much one has to take both the picture and environment into consideration in order to get the message across.

you probably shouldn't click any of the links in this post at work. fair warning.

I) I just need to post this. What better illustration of the ridiculousness of authorship and legitimacy than the business card scene from American Psycho?

It even has a watermark.


II) To follow the trend of everyone posting found graffiti, perhaps some may find this local project somewhat interesting. I believe this was actually someone's class project at some point. Luckily it has recorded for posterity the fabulous graffiti of the first floor ladies' room in the English building, which has been mostly scrubbed off in the past few months (though I managed to grab the gem to the left last semester). I swear, that bathroom is better than PostSecret.

welcome to the hypermediacy house

Hypermediacy, even at its best, promises no small amount of sensory overload and possibly confusion. Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves is perhaps the pinnacle of this. Written as a mockery of literary theory and its self-referential nature, the story itself is insanely multilayered and reliant on various technologies. Johnny Truant tells his story, mostly in footnotes (some of which span several pages) of finding the manuscript of the recently deceased Zampano. Zampano's manuscript is a critical analysis of an apparently non-existent film which in turn is a documentary of a photojournalist's family and their exploration of their house which they discover to be bigger on the inside than on the outside. Confused yet? Trust me, you'd be this confused even after your third attempt at the thing.
And then we have the physical presence of the book:

That collage (oh hey- collages!) sticking out is the start of the pages... the book is bigger on the inside than the outside. Among other sundry idiosyncrasies, there are numerous appendices that link back into the pages of the story, an entirely nonsensical index, and the pages that physically mimic the story they tell. So you eventually end up trying to read something that looks like this:

(This means that there are characters trapped in a labyrinth, in case you were wondering.)

Oh, and those colors? The word house is always in blue, and minotaur and passages in strike-thru are in red... the LOC page at the beginning of the book explains this all, but then again it also references editions that do not exist.

To make things even more hypermediated, Danielewski's sister is the musician Poe (you know, one of those 90s chick rockers that Julia Stiles liked in 10 Things I Hate About You¹). She released a companion work, 'Haunted,' which is actually considered to be part of the book itself.
Hey Pretty [note: not entirely family-friendly]


It also might be interesting to note that the first copy of the book - while Danielewski was searching for a publisher who would not refuse to publish it in this complicated form - was online, and read through hyperlinks.

What does this say for current mediacy and our view of it? There have been arguments about whether House of Leaves can be properly called a novel or even a book. Is this an evolution of text that will eventually be absorbed into our idea of the written artistic word or is it a new kind of media altogether?

¹I would like to take an informal poll of how many people watched Heath Ledger singing Frankie Valli on the bleachers after reading this aside.

Bolter Readings: Q&A

3) How, in 20th century art, can a viewer look at or see through the piece (for example Bolter uses the example of collages)? [Nicole]

20th Century art appears, in some way, to be self aware and self-mediating (in the traditional sense, not in the made-up-theory-word sense). Collages, in the given example, are representative of relationships between physical space as well as of more abstract ideas, and furthermore the physical suggests the abstract. Collages, too, necessitate a creator; nothing is naturally 'collaged'.
The idea of transparency leads to the idea that anything perceived must not only been seen but seen through. This in turn goes back the idea of mediacy and transmitting information across different media. As with collages, 20th century art when read as media can be both a transmitter and a transmission. There is a duality at hand that becomes increasingly inherent within art as it becomes more (post-)modern. It is self-aware of the creator as it attempts to hide him/her and become an entity unto itself.

Bolter Readings: Response Questions

Before I go into anything else, I think I posted my first post wrong. So I'd like to apologize for that. Well, that and posting these so late as I am still without any personal internet access.

Anyways, on to the questions.

1) All of Bolter's talk of different kinds of '-mediacy' seems to mirror Baudrillard's ideas of the Real, especially of the hyperreal/simulacrum. To what extent is media a neccessity of something being seen as 'real'? Alternately, in what ways does hypermediacy contribute to the hyperreal?

2) Is media a reflection of the way in which we perceive the world, or a mode of perception in and of itself? Or both?

3) What evidence of remediation have you seen in your own experiences? Were you at all aware of remediation (or hypermediacy, etc) before being forced to confront them, or has remediation succeeded to this extent by fading into the background?

intro post

This is the blog of Lauren Graham, a senior in English at a fairly large Midwestern university. Right now my life consists mostly of class and work; soon it will be class, work, and applying to law school. I come from a very Italian town, so if I use any phrasings you don’t recognize, that’s probably why. I hope to eventually get involved in international or art law, or any permutation of the two. However, as of now I’m the typical English major. I make obscure literary references and work at an independent coffee shop.